Open it up at Metro: It’s wrong to hide the agency budget

Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle

Published 5:30 am, Wednesday, September 16, 2009

What is it about open government that Metro doesn't understand?

The regional transit authority, which is funded with hundreds of millions in tax dollars annually, can't quite bring itself to open up all the way and let the public see how it does its business. This time it's the 2010 fiscal budget that's being kept under wraps.

The headline on Monday's column by Chronicle reporter Carolyn Feibel sums up the problem and states the solution: “Metro needs to roll out a complete budget.”

Yes, it does, and not at the very last minute.

As Feibel reports, the transit authority's budget is stuck in its Finance/Audit committee, which has so far refused to release a full copy. A spokesman for the committee noted that a summary of the budget had been provided because “that's the way we've always done it.” The budget is supposed to be voted on by the board today.

This episode follows by only a few weeks a dispute over timely posting of the times of crucial committee meetings. In most organizations, committees are where the meaningful work is done, and Metro is no exception. Finding out when those meetings were scheduled had required Metro patrons to trek downtown to the authority's headquarters; but the agency recently relented and now posts the meetings online.

According to Feibel, there is a rift inside Metro about whether to release the budget on a more timely basis. State law is silent on the issue, Feibel says, and that evidently has provided a rationale for the authority to behave as it has.

Sorry, but that's a fig leaf. It doesn't begin to justify withholding information about how taxpayer dollars are spent. Carolyn Feibel performs admirably as the public's eyes and ears at Metro. She — and others like her — should not be blocked from playing that watchdog role.

The city of Houston offers a workable and logical alternative to Metro's secrecy, as Feibel pointed out in her Monday column. The city posts its entire proposed city budget online for one and all to review and comment.